Audiobooks have been phenomenal way to get back into books.

Long drives, chores, little bit of downtime with some mobile game that doesn’t require much thought (Match 3… yes, Baba is you or Balatro… no)

I’ve read a couple hundred books thee past few years thanks to audiobooks and Libby

I actually do a fuck-ton of reading on my computers and phone. ^{Lemmy comments count, right?}

I actually don’t think reading for the sake of reading is all that important, especially if it is not something one naturally enjoys. A good movie, a quality TV show, a well written song or even interestingly captured photograph can be more stimulating than a random mediocre book. Do read if you like - a good book can be mind blowing; but more importanly try to find quality in all media you consume, take your time to think about what you consumed and open your senses to the world around you.

Why does nobody count heavily article and conversation based reading media as reading?

All 4 of these things she’s doing could have heavy amounts of reading.

Also, if reading was all it was cracked up to be, we wouldn’t be spending nearly a trillion dollars between video media and gaming media.

Before the internet arrived at my home, I used to read a fair amount of books - maybe about ten every year - but that fell by the wayside, even after I bought an e-ink tablet specifically for the purpose.

However, I do a lot more of writing than I used to, in these threads as well as messaging friends and family, long chains of text bubbles about whatever’s on my mind.

Also, thanks to some truly excellent YouTube channels - both from content creators and university lectures - I now understand things like cosmology and physics, math and ancient history, so much better than I used to, better than with any book I ever came across, and it is an exhilarating feeling. To the point that I now prefer binging on knowledge content than watching movies or television series.

To watch someone who has a way with words get carried away with excitement for an hour or two while describing things like the Michelson-Morley experiment, or the Stern-Gerlach experiment, Feynman diagrams and Penrose diagrams, makes me feel like something about society that used to be remote and flat and black & white, suddenly exploded into 3D and glorious technicolor.